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Publication Date: March 18, 2003
Build Your Way to Success?
This will be a fairly short column, although it could have been significant with certain answers. It's short for two reasons -- I've been on jury duty part of the week, so I'm crunched for time (no, I wasn't chosen; don't be ridiculous, I'm a quasi-engineer), and it's a fairly simple question that I wanted to answer. It was potentially significant because, with the right answer, center field could have gotten a lot bigger or smaller in your favorite ballpark.
The question was one I alluded to in my recent column on park factors -- does having either a pro-offense or pro-pitching park help with winning? There's all sorts of reasons to think that it might, from long-term coaches building parks to match their coaching style to the fact that teams with good pitching stats tend to perform better than teams with good hitting stats overall, but the short answer is that neither one seems to make much difference.
To study this, I tried two different variations of the question. The first is whether there was a correlation between raw success, as measured by the five-year ISR's, and the park factor, in either direction. In this case, the correlation shows up as -.23. In other words, defensive ballparks host winning teams slightly more often, but not often enough to be statistically significant; that's barely out of the range of random chance.
The second question was whether there was a correlation between success above expectations, as measured by the EFI, and the park factor. In this case, the correlation was .18. That's not a completely independent assessment, since some of the factors that impact the EFI, such as dry weather, also affect the park factor in the form of low humidity, but since it's down in the noise but opposite the other weak answer, I think it's pretty safe to say that there's no effect on success one way or the other in how the home field is built. Teams are probably better off designing stadiums to increase attendance and then tailor the team, if necessary, to fit the stadium.
Pitch Count Watch
Rather than keep returning to the subject of pitch counts and pitcher usage in general too often for my main theme, I'm just going to run a standard feature down here where I point out potential problems; feel free to stop reading above this if the subject doesn't interest you. This will just be a quick listing of questionable starts that have caught my eye -- the general threshold for listing is 120 actual pitches or 130 estimated, although short rest will also get a pitcher listed if I catch it. Don't blame me; I'm just the messenger.
| Date | Team | Pitcher | Opponent | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | AB | BF | Pitches | ||||||||||||
| Mar 14 | Georgia State | R Robinson | Central Florida | 8.0 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 9 | 29 | 31 | 130 | ||||||||||||
| Mar 14 | Northern Illinois | Skrukrud | Birmingham-Southern | 8.1 | 7 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 33 | 34 | 124 | ||||||||||||
| Mar 14 | North Carolina-Charlotte | Zachary Treadway | South Florida | 9.0 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 9 | 30 | 36 | 139 (*) | ||||||||||||
| Mar 14 | Illinois-Chicago | Ryan Gehring | Louisiana-Lafayette | 9.0 | 10 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 36 | 40 | 146 (*) | ||||||||||||
| Mar 14 | Tennessee Tech | Doug Vincent | Youngstown State | 9.0 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 9 | 33 | 39 | 146 (*) | ||||||||||||
| Mar 14 | Brigham Young | Paul Jacinto | New Mexico | 8.1 | 11 | 9 | 9 | 3 | 7 | 36 | 40 | 151 (*) | ||||||||||||
| Mar 15 | Duquesne | Bob Reifschneider | William and Mary | 9.0 | 10 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 36 | 39 | 137 | ||||||||||||
| Mar 15 | North Carolina State | Phillip Davidson | North Carolina-Wilmington | 9.0 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 32 | 33 | 120 | ||||||||||||
| Mar 15 | St. Louis | Hutton | Southern Mississippi | 6.0 | 9 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 27 | 30 | 120 | ||||||||||||
| Mar 15 | Centenary | J. C. Biagi | Siena | 9.0 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 10 | 33 | 36 | 144 (*) | ||||||||||||
| Mar 15 | Wright State | C Abrams | Marshall | 7.1 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 9 | 14 | 24 | 34 | 146 (*) | ||||||||||||
| Mar 15 | Louisiana-Lafayette | Andy Gros | Illinois-Chicago | 9.0 | 14 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 36 | 40 | 130 (*) | ||||||||||||
| Mar 15 | Canisius | Dracup | Ohio | 8.0 | 16 | 11 | 7 | 2 | 4 | 39 | 41 | 142 (*) | ||||||||||||
| Mar 15 | Tennessee | Hochevar | Auburn | 9.0 | 7 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 37 | 39 | 126 | ||||||||||||
| Mar 15 | Appalachian State | Nick Peterson | College of Charleston | 7.2 | 9 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 6 | 31 | 37 | 143 (*) | ||||||||||||
| Mar 15 | Rice | Philip Humber | Hawaii | 8.0 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 8 | 29 | 32 | 121 | ||||||||||||
| Mar 16 | Kansas | Ryan Knippschild | Oral Roberts | 9.0 | 7 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 34 | 36 | 133 | ||||||||||||
| Mar 16 | San Jose State | Carlos Torres | Nevada | 9.0 | 9 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 32 | 36 | 121 | ||||||||||||
| Mar 18 | Rice | Wade Townsend | Nebraska | 8.0 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 12 | 26 | 29 | 132 | ||||||||||||
| Mar 18 | Texas A&M-Corpus Christi | Jimmy Hamon | Lamar | 7.0 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 10 | 28 | 35 | 146 (*) |
(*) Pitch count is estimated.
You know, one of the things that always bugs me about this list is that at least half of the guys on it didn't even pitch all that well. I mean, what you usually hear from the coaches is, "I hated to pull him when he was throwing well," as if that was an excuse, but, really, taking 146 pitches just to give up seven runs to Lamar?
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